


Tony’s Way Home

by dinochicknugget



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Blip, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 15:35:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20084575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinochicknugget/pseuds/dinochicknugget
Summary: Tony’s journey to acceptance by looking through his past.





	Tony’s Way Home

**Author's Note:**

> So I know that May blipped, but for the sake of angst we’re pretending that she didn’t. 
> 
> Also thank you so much to Aanya for helping beta it.

It had even two months since the Battle of Titan. Tony had lost practically everything that day. There’s nothing worse than when a superhero can’t save the planet that he swore to protect, and Tony didn’t see a foreseeable way for him to avenge it either. Killing Thanos just hadn’t even and would not ever be enough.

The past couple of weeks had been especially torturous though. It was bad enough that half of the universe had suddenly disappeared. It was even worse with Steve moping around the complex over his lost Bucky, and often just barging into his room to ask if he was okay. Tony couldn’t stay there a minute longer. He had thought about taking Pepper for a long weekend, but she was almost as bad as Steve. She was constantly fussing over him about his health, both physical and mental. Tony wasn’t going to lie. Being trapped on a spaceship for three weeks with an angry metal lady had not exactly done wonders for his health. Neither had losing Peter, but if he had survived the shrapnel that was dead set on his heart, then he would survive this too. Pepper had nothing to worry about.

Tony packed a small bag and said his goodbyes. He told what was left of the team that he had to be away for a while to clear his head. He wasn’t sure where he was going. All he knew was that he needed to get the hell out of Dodge.

He started driving, just as aimless in his intentions as before. As he drove he started to think, and his mind wandered. For the past couple of weeks, all that Tony could think about was the Battle of Titan. All he could hear were the words, “I don’t wanna go,” and Peter’s final haunting words, “I’m sorry,” like they were on a loop in the back of his mind that Tony couldn’t turn off. Tony had always tried to do his best to protect Peter, just a kid from Queens, and in the end his best hadn’t been enough. 

The first thing he had done when he got back, right after killing Thanos, had been to drive to Queen’s and talk to May. She had stared at him in disbelief for a few moments after he told here before she burst into tears. Right after that, she had called him a dirty bastard and kicked him out, but not before she had thrown one of her shoes at him when he had tried to comfort her.

Tony continued driving. He merged onto the freeway and began to head south, still not quite sure where he was going. He drove all day and night, not needing sleep, a characteristic reminiscent of the old Tony Stark. It was not until early the next morning that he saw the sign. Welcome to Tennessee!

Tony remembered the last time he was in Tennessee with a smile. It was where he first met Harley Keener, the boy who healed him. They had kept in touch over the years. Harley had found himself the recipient of many mysterious and suspicious Stark Industries scholarships over the years, but Tony had never never found the time to make the trip back to Rose Hill, Tennessee. Now, Tony knew where he was going. Maybe Harley could work his magic again and fix Tony like one of his potato guns.

…

A few hours later, Tony was pulling onto Harley’s street, He smiled softly when he saw the little garage again. He remembered the night that he dragged himself into that very same garage and was discovered by the boy who would save him. 

He pulled into the driveway, walked up to the front door, and knocked. He waited for several long moments before he heard the telltale click of the lock being unlatched, and a woman appeared at the door. She was older and dressed in a bathrobe and bunny slippers. Her hair looked as though it hadn’t been brushed in some time, and she smelled strongly of cigarette smoke and alcohol.

“What do you want?” she asked. Her voice was coarse, and her tone was harsh.

“My name is-“

“Tony Stark,” she finished for him. “I recognize you from the TV. Your face is planted on every news show known to man. What do you want?” 

“I’m here to see Harley.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is he not here at the moment?”

“Yeah, if that’s what you want to call it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you get it?” the woman asked as she raised her voice. “He’s gone, and he’s not coming back just like the other half of the planet.”

“Harley was snapped?” Tony asked, his voice breaking at the end.

“Yeah, and it’s all you and your Avengers’ fault. You couldn’t stop Thanos from killing half of the universe, and you couldn’t even get the Infinity Stones. You can’t protect the planet, and you can’t avenge it. What are y’all even good for anyway? You couldn’t stop him from taking my baby away from me.”

At this point, Tony was getting angry too. Obviously this woman was Harley’s mother, but where had she been the last time that Tony had been here? And who was she to judge him and the other Avenger’s performance or act like they were suffering the effects of the snap any less than the rest of the world. Everybody had lost somebody. This woman had not been on Titan or in Wakanda. Who was she to lecture Tony? Especially seeing as the last time that Tony had been lectured by somebody’s mother, he had ripped his friends, his family apart and turned half of them into fugitives. Who did this lady think she was?

“Excuse me, but who are you to blame me for what happened to your son. I tried to stop this, all of it. I don’t remember seeing you on Titan, trying to rip the Infinity Gauntlet off of his hand. I’m sorry to hear about what happened to Harley, but I thought I was the only one who would care anyways seeing as I’m the only one who cared about him in the first place. Where were you the last time I was here because I seem to remember your son running around helping me repair my suit and figure out what was happening all night. Did you even bother to ask where he was?” 

Tony stopped to take a breath and that was when he noticed the look of the woman in front of him. She looked surprised and taken aback, but more importantly hurt. Tony lost a lot of steam when he saw this and he softened up considerably.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your loss and I hope you can forgive for my behavior. I was out of line,” he confessed. Harley’s mother now seemed to have closed herself off, and she fixed Tony with a hard glare.

“I think it would be best if you left now,” she said in a cool voice.

“Bu-“ Tony began, but the door was shut in his face.

…

After Harley’s mother had slammed the door in his face, Tony had turned around and rushed back to his car. He had started to drive, but he had barely made it halfway around the block before he had had to stop. He had pulled the car over to the side of the rode. He had sat there for a long time before he started to cry. Tony had broken down and began to sob. They were great heaving sobs. He cried until he couldn’t cry anymore. Then he had pulled back onto the road and began to drive. 

Now, it was a few hours later, and he had been driving for hours. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept or eaten. Tony knew that if Pepper had even there, she would have chastised him severely for it. He could practically hear her screaming at him in the back of his mind. She always had worried too much about him even when he hadn’t deserved it.

He got off at the next exit and pulled into the parking lot of the first McDonald’s he saw. He went inside and ordered a Big Mac with fries and a large Coke. Food in hand, he went to a booth in the back corner and began to eat. 

As he ate, he thought back to what Harley’s mother had said to him earlier, blaming him for what Thanos had done. He thought back to what Peter had said to him the first time they had met. “When you can do the things I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you.” But Tony had tried to stop Thanos. It just wasn’t enough. He still blamed himself for what had happened. Would he ever stop? 

Finished with his food, he stood to throw out his trash as he left. He got back into his car and pulled back onto the highway. He continued driving except this time he was heading north. He wasn’t quite ready to go back to the Avengers Complex quite yet, but he had nowhere else to go. 

He was already in Pennsylvania, and by nightfall he would be in New York City. He remembered the Tower. He hadn’t seen in it months. Now, it stood vacant in the middle of the city. He wanted to see it again, but he wasn't even sure what he would find when he went there.

The entire world had suffered the effects of Thanos’s snap, but cities, such as New York, had been hit the hardest. There had been chaos, fires, car accidents, plane crashes, and more. New York was in shambles. It was a lucky thing that Stark Tower had survived unharmed.

As Tony drove into the city, he could just make out the top of Stark Tower in the distance. Soon, he pulled up to the front door. He took the elevator to the penthouse ad just stood and took in the view.

He remembered the night that Coulson had showed up and first told him about the missing Tesseract. He had just finished making Stark Tower a beacon of self sustaining energy. He and Pepper were having a moment. Well, Pepper was having 12% of a moment. Then, Coulson came in and changed his entire world. Before, it was Iron Man against the world. From then on, it was Iron Man and his team against the world.

Tony’s mind flashed to another memory. He was in that room with Loki, telling him just how strong his team was, and just how much he believed in them. It was odd. Those weren’t words that Tony ever thought that he would hear himself say, and yet he meant what he said. He really did believe in the Avengers and he was confident when he said that if the Avengers couldn’t protect the Earth then you could be damn well sure that they would avenge it.

Tony realized then that he needed to get out there. He had too many memories there. Tony needed to talk to somebody and decompress. That didn’t mean that he was ready to be psychoanalyzed by Pepper though. He hadn’t been to see May since Peter had been dusted. It might be nice to talk to her again. He’d even choke down some of that walnut date loaf as long as he got some good conversation out of it as well.

The last time that Tony had seen May, it hadn’t gone well. As he remembered it, May had been sobbing and throwing slices of her famous walnut date loaf at him while shouting things that even he wouldn’t dare to repeat.

…

30 minutes later, he had pulled up outside of May’s apartment in Queens. He walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. May answered it a few moments later. 

“Leave,” she said in a dangerously calm tone.

“What?” Tony asked incredulously.

“I said ‘leave’,” 

“May…”

“No!’ she shouted. “Don’t speak! Just get out!”

“Why? What did I do?”

“You’re the reason that he’s dead!”

“May, I know that, and I’m sorry,” Tony apologized. “I tried as hard as I could to keep him safe, but it wasn’t enough. I should never have dragged him into this life.

“He was 16! He didn’t deserve this, any of this!”

“I’m so sorry. It gets better. I’m sure. At least, that’s what everybody keeps saying. I can’t imagine how this feels for you, but just know that I lost him too. And I could spend the rest of my life blaming myself for that, which in the past I probably would have done, but now… Now, I know that I don’t have to put myself through that because I have people who love me. I don’t know why, but the point is that I can turn to them.. That seems like a much better option if you ask me.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks to you I don’t have that option anymore,” May said as her voice began to break.

“May, it’s going to be okay,” Tony said as he put his arms around her to comfort her.

“Not its not!” she sobbed.

“It’s gonna get better.”

“You sound like a grief pamphlet,” May said as she looked up at him.

“Sorry.”

“You keep saying that,” May mumbled into his shirt. Tony just hugged her tighter. “Thank you, and I’m sorry for yelling at you and stuff.”

“It’s okay. I miss him too.”

“It’s just that ever since my husband, Ben, died, Peter became my whole world. Now he’s gone. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“That’s okay. The entire world right now, or what’s left of it, is trying to figure out what to do with themselves,” Tony reasoned.

“I just really want him back.”

“I promise you that that is one of my biggest priorities right now. And trust me when I say that Steve won’t sleep until he has Bucky back. Coincidentally, we have also run out of coffee,” he joked. May chuckled lightly and used the back of her hand to brush some of her tears away.

“How’s Pepper doing?”

“As good as any of us can do. She’s been working herself to death trying to keep Stark Industries stable and working on outreach programs for the survivors. And in her spare time she pesters me constantly about opening up about my feelings.”

“So the same old Pepper huh?”

“Yeah,” Tony said with a smile. 

May and Peter had come to visit the Avengers Complex last year after May had found out that Peter was Spider-Man. They had met what was left of the Avengers who were living in the Complex. They had toured the facility and talked about the possibility of Peter moving there after high school, and if he wanted he could go to a nearby school like Cornell. All of that was gone now.

May led him over to the couch, and they sat and reminisced about Peter for a while. 

“You know, I don’t think I ever told you this,” Tony began. “But the first time I ever met Peter was the day that I told you that he had won the Stark Internship. As you now know, I was actually telling Peter to come to Germany, and do you know what he said to me. He said that he couldn’t go to Germany. He had homework.” May burst out laughing. 

“That sounds like him,” she said with a fond smile on her face. “When Peter was little he used to run around the house with an Iron Man mask on. He liked to pretend that he was saving us from mortal peril. Ben used to have to yell at him to stop. Peter couldn’t see worth a crap in that thing. He was always running into furniture, and he was covered in bruises. Even when he was little, he wanted to be a hero. Even before he met he, he idolized you.”

“That means a lot. He died being a hero. I don’t know if you know this, but we almost won, and that was because of Peter. He was so close to getting the Gauntlet. That’s what hurts the most about this. Nobody deserves to die, but Peter less so than possibly any other person on the planet. Thanos wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted perfect balance. The snap didn’t just take bad people. It took the best of us and the worst of us, perfectly even.”

“I had no idea. Do you really mean that there was a chance? The media said that y’all were brutally outmatched.”

“We were, but on Titan, we all fought Thanos just to take the Gauntlet. Peter had it a little more than halfway off before things started to go south.”

“Wow,” May exhaled as she clapped over her mouth. “I didn’t realize.”

“Yeah,” Tony said solemnly, a quiet affirmation. “I should be going now. I wouldn’t want to be an imposition.”

“You’re not an imp-“

“I need to get home to Pepper” Tony lied. “And really, I wouldn’t want to overstretch your hospitality.”

“Well, goodbye then, Tony,” May said as she gave him a hug. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“Goodbye, May.”

…

Before long, Tony was on the road again. It was beginning to get dark, and he wasn’t quite sure where to go. He had told May that he was going home to Pepper, and he wasn’t in the mood for lying today. He might as well go home. It was time.

…

A few hours later, Tony was pulling up to the lake house with a bag of Burger King in the seat next to him. For some reason, Pepper had been craving it all week. It was practically all she ate. He walked in the door and looked for Pepper, but he couldn’t see her anywhere.

“Honey, I’m home!” he called out in a joking tone. Then, he saw Pepper emerge from the bathroom in tears. “Pepper? Pepper? Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” 

A million possibilities raced through his head. He thought back to two years prior when they had separated and it had nearly killed him. He didn’t think that he could go through that again, especially after everything that had happened. 

“We need to talk,” she said as she led him to the couch. “I think you should sit down.”

“Pepper, I know that things have been tough lately, but I promise that I will do better. I love you. You are my number one prio-“

“No, Tony. It's not that,” Pepper chuckled as she wiped away her tears with the back of her sleeve. “ I’m pregnant.” Tony’s mouth dropped open. He was silent. “Tony, are you okay?”

He sorted to make this these weird strained noises in the back of his throat like he was trying to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Tony, what are you trying to say?”

“I love you,” he finally said. “And I’m going to love this child too. I’m just so worried,” Tony said as he threw an arm around Pepper’s shoulder and pulled her closer to him.

“Tony, you have nothing to be worried about,” Pepper giggled as though the very thought of that was ridiculous. “You’re going to be a great dad, and I will be there with you every step of the way.”

“Or I could end up like my father.”

“Tony, in some ways you are exactly like your father. In other ways, you couldn't be more different. I am sure that you will the greatest dad that the world has ever seen.”

“They’re going to have their pick of schools, and I’ll teach them all about engineering. I just had the most perfect idea, a baby Iron Man suit!”

“No,” Pepper said firmly.

“I wrote the book on quantum physics, but I can’t even make toast without the threat of burning down the house. How am I going to be able to take care of a child?”

“You’re brilliant. I’m sure you’ll come up with something,” Pepper reassured him as she snuggled closer into his chest.

“You’re right! I can see it now! Stark Industries’ babyproofing line will be better than anything else on the market,” he chuckled said he closed his eyes. Soon, he was fast asleep with Pepper in his arms, dreaming about their future together as a family.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
